If it's that easy, please do so and send us the link. Except connect me
to the Queen of Sheba, please.

Art Hoffman, my Montreal born mother who’s name was 
Ida was always called Chaike or Chaikelah by her Russian born mother so that’s the name I had put on her headstone. Years later said that Chaike is a diminutive for Chaya!

No registration is necessary. Translating the Lithuanian language is a must! In other words, install the capability to have Google Translate directly translate your webpages.

If you were to go to the home page and attempt to fill in the required information in order to get to these records, you would follow the following procedure:

1.The home page is at: https://eais-pub.archyvai.lt/eais/faces/pages/forms/search/F3001.jspx
2. Once you have translated the website to English, the navgation is as follows: 

3. Under Description Search, choose Advanced. The form will change slightly, giving you more fields which may be poulated.

4. Under Custodian, Choose LVIA (Lith. State Historical Archives). Also fill in 11 under Fund. This pertains to these specific records. Select Search or hit Enter.

5. You will see in dark blue 2/3 of the way down the number 11 followed by the title of this fond. It will read as follows:

Previous                                         1 - 1 of 1                                     Kiti

11. Treasury Commission of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Komisja Skarbowa Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego) (LVIA)

6. Click on this and you will be taken to the next screen where you will see a full description of the fond. Read through it if you'd like, but select the button below labeled "View circular descriptions"

7. You will now see a screen giving you a choice of two files to examine. Click on the first one. This will take you to a screen which describes Fond 11/1. Do not click on the PDF file near the bottom under "Files". Instead, select the button at the bottom which reads "View descriptions of units of account". Note: If you click on the PDF file title, you'll see an inventory book which lists the contents of F11/1 by title but not the images.

8. The last screen shows you a listing of all the images held under F11/1. Select which images are of interest and you will see the final screen where you now select the PDF file. This file contains the images. For Kovno records, you'll see the filename as follows:

Files

LVIA_F11_ap1_b1021.pdf

Joel Ratner

I have a copy of a book, ZYCIE Wedlug Wartosci, written by dr Jacek Proszyk, the archivist at the Bielsko Biala Castle Museum about the Jewish Community over time. The book is written in Polish but comes with a CD of the English version, which I will continue looking for. The book relies heavily on written sources, which are mostly about men and almost no genealogical information. He mentions Edmund and Josef Unger, Jakob, Joachim and Leo Seifter and Josef Rufeisen, but no women. The author's email is proszyk@.... Nice man, very happy to share what he knows.

My grandmother, Ida Schanzer, born 1885 in Andrychau, moved to Bielitz Bialy. I have a school photo of her class, must be about 1898 at the Jewish Girls' School. Can anyone suggest where I might post it?

Jessica Skippon
SCHANZER in Wadowice and Andrychau
BORGER and BIRN in Andrychau
JACHZEL

--
Barbara Ellman
Secaucus NJ USA
HASSMAN, SONENTHAL, DAUERMAN, LUCHS - Drohobycz, Ukraine
HIRSCHHORN, GOLDSTEIN, BUCHWALD - Dolyna, Ukraine
ELLMAN, COIRA, MAIDMAN - Minkovtsy, Ukraine
KAGLE, FASS - Ulanow, Poland

Yale Zussman writes:

"Unless there is an actual proof that involuntary name-changes weren't
possible, you cannot reject the name-change narratives out of hand. 
Given the number of potential cases, around 37 million, and what is
known about the operation of the immigration stations (it's discussed in
the Congressional Record), the notion that involuntary name-changes were
impossible because the immigration process operated flawlessly is simply
absurd."

The actual proof is in the facts:

--that no documentary evidence of a name-change by an immigration
official has been found;

--that there is no evidence that a procedure existed for doing such a
thing;

--that no form on which a name-change would be entered has been known to
exist;

--that no regulation regarding name-changes at the port of entry has
ever been found;

--that someone who purportedly received such treatment would either have
had to memorize the new name instantly or receive it written down in an
alphabet they might not even have been able to read;

--that there was no such thing as a database of people's names to which
such an event might be reported;

--and on and on.

For that matter, the first thing to keep in mind is that the immigration
officers didn't even write down the vast majority of the names of people
who passed by them. They compared the names on the passenger list to
those on the steamship tickets, made check-marks and the occasional
rubber-stamp, and that was generally it.

The immigration process did not operate flawlessly, but since we've
never found a way that an immigration officer *could* have changed a
name with any expectation that it would stick for more than 5 minutes,
how could a "flaw" lead to a name change? A flaw in what?

Oh, and the immigration officers spoke 40 languages in aggregate. They
were assigned to ships according to the languages expected to be found
among the passengers, and could in a pinch call on colleagues to help.

Roger Lustig

Princeton, NJ USA

Nessiha (Hebrew) means "princess".
Shabbat Shalom,

Valentin Lupu
Israel

Yonatan Ben-Ari <yonibenari@...> wrote:

<<Tom's mother and grandmother may have lived in the Sea Gate area and
Tom would visit his mother during the summers. Are Coney
Island and Sea Gate close to each other?>>

From Wikipedia:

<<Sea Gate is a private gated community at the far western end of
Coney Island at the southwestern tip of the New York City borough of
Brooklyn. Located on the portion of the Coney Island peninsula west of
West 37th Street, it contains mostly single-family homes, some
directly on Gravesend Bay.>>

Renee

Renee Stern Steinig
Dix Hills NY
genmaven@...

On 6/26/2020 9:44 AM, JoAnne Goldberg wrote:

About "changing the spelling" -- the manifests I've seen have all been
written in English or German, in any case, using our Latin alphabet.
Whereas many of our ancestors would have written their names in Russian
or Yiddish, totally different alphabets. The name on the manifest might
have been an undecipherable scribble to them (assuming they were
literate at all)

Jews in the Pale of Settlement (Poland, Lithuania) and nearby areas
would have been at least as familiar with the Roman alphabet as with the
Cyrillic.  Very few Jews were completely monolingual in Yiddish.  Most
people, even many Russian serfs, could hock a chainik in more than one
language.  By the 1890's most Jews had at least a couple years school,
and both Cyrillic and Roman were taught in all grammar schools, and Jews
in Yeshiva picked up enough.   In the 19th Century the first 2 years of
school everywhere were better than 6 grades today.  Remember, Lincoln
had no more than a year and a half of school.  When you think of your
grandparents arriving in the US, don't think of the elderly people you
remember--think of the young bright eager to work and to learn people
they were.

Jules Levin

Also, there was a comment yesterday about names beginning with G or H.
The Russian (Cyrllic) alphabet has a guttural H, like the beginning of
Khrushchev, but a soft H is rendered with a G, hence, the Shakespearean
play Gamlet or Hirsch spelled as Girsh. I am guessing these names were
pronounced correctly, but written in the Russian alphabet with an
initial G, which of course looks nothing like an English/German G.

Curious if anyone has more information on these -- could be helpful in
understanding the name-change stories that so many of us have.
--
JoAnne Goldberg - Menlo Park, California; GEDmatch M131535
BLOCH, SEGAL, FRIDMAN, KAMINSKY, PLOTNIK/KIN -- LIthuania
GOLDSCHMIDT, HAMMERSCHLAG,HEILBRUNN, REIS(S), EDELMUTH, ROTHSCHILD,
SPEI(Y)ER -- Hesse, Germany
COHEN, KAMP, HARFF, FLECK, FRÖHLICH, HAUSMANN,  DANIEL  -- Rhineland,
Germany

Yoni,

You can see a 1910 photo of The Whitier Inn at this link. The poster claims that Isaac Bashevis Singer spent time at The Whitier Inn.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/80454089@N00/5533313670

This site has a bit of history about Sea Gate.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/brooklyn-sea-gate-whittier-inn-1809149938

A quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Gate,_Brooklyn
"Sea Gate is a private gated community at the far western end of Coney Island at the southwestern tip of the New York City borough of Brooklyn.^[1] Located on the portion of the Coney Island peninsula west of West 37th Street"

Hope this helps,

Sherri Bobish
Princeton, NJ

Dear Yale, It sounds most likely, given the paucity of documentary proof, that most of these stories originated out of embarrassment about having chosen another surname. Perhaps some wanted to hide the original name, due to its obvious origin (an undesirable" country of merely just foreign) or ethnicity. In any case the new surname was the preferred surname. Someone who preferred his/her original surname could have changed it back, so that was not the case.  And there it stands. 
Good luck in your search.

The term "notions" is used for sewing accessories like buttons, snaps, etc. Here's a link to a wiki. 

I am attaching a photo of what I believe to be my maternal grandmother's family.  She was Roza Friedman Stein came from Tarne-Mare Romania and died in 1937 in Chicago.   My own mother is now 101 and is unable to recognize anyone in the photo. She is the last person living who would be able to tell who the people were.   I believe one of them was my great Uncle David Friedman who came to visit my GM in Chicago and then returned to Europe and died in Auschwitz.   On the off chance that anyone on this list serve may recognize I am attaching and asking to let me know.   Thanks so much.

I will answer Yale point by point:

On 6/26/2020 8:24 AM, YaleZuss via groups.jewishgen.org wrote:

I am fascinated by the assumption in many of these responses that I
haven't done my homework.  No-one, including in a flurry of personal
contacts, has mentioned an item that I hadn't seen already in my
study.  I read each of them and then back-checked it; how many of you
who cite these items have done so?
Jules, have you ever actually bothered to look at the data or think
about your claims? Do you know anyone who can speak 40 languages? 
Does any of them work for the amount paid the immigration inspectors?
Has it ever occurred to you that there might be errors in government
documents?

This second paragraph is ironic coming after your affirmation of your
careful reading.  I think almost everyone understood that I did not say
there was someone there who spoke 40 languages.  An averagely careful
reader understood correctly that among the many immigration inspectors
over 40 languages were spoken.  Someone in this discussion who has also
studied the issue claims many more than 40.  This is not surprising,
since I think that America was a more polyglot country in the 19th
Century than now--but this is a different issue.

I also have the impression that one of the beliefs underlying the "meme"
is a middle-class urban Jewish attitude vis-a-vis the presumed
native-born Wasps from the sticks who they assume were the officials
engaged in silly frivolous name changes.  Consider this as a factor.

Another factor I hope you will explore is /cui bono/, which Russians
especially like (komy pol'za)--who benefits?  Why did these frazzled
hungry (to go home to dine) officials stand to gain by arbitrarily
changing names?  And what did the second generation immigrants gain by
telling their 3rd gen children "it was changed at Ellis Island..."   I
think the 2nd question is easier to answer.  It was embarrassing to tell
their children that their grandparents wanted to seem less "Jewish",
more American.  Clearly the officials had nothing to gain by deviating
from procedures.

I started my study looking for the reasoning behind the meme, not to
reject it, but as one claim after another proved to be wrong, based on
faulty logic, or on methodological errors, I started wondering how it
came about.  Then I heard from the USCIS Historians' Office that they
didn't know where the meme came from.  I'm still working on that.

Unless there is an actual proof that involuntary name-changes weren't
possible, you cannot reject the name-change narratives out of hand. 
Given the number of potential cases, around 37 million, and what is
known about the operation of the immigration stations (it's discussed
in the Congressional Record), the notion that involuntary name-changes
were impossible because the immigration process operated flawlessly is
simply absurd.

The immigration process did not have to operate flawlessly to guard
against involuntary name changing.  This is a red herring. Are migrants
today having their names changed by gov officials when they enter the
country?  Of course not, but no one would claim the current system
operates flawlessly.

Let me propose a way of teasing out factors within the Jewish community
that might explain what was going on--why some Horowitzes changed the
name, and others did not.  {sidebar: Yiddish joke I heard from my
father--remember Sadie Horowitz from the old neighborhood.  When she
came to America she changed her name.  In the old country it was
Kurvawitz.}  Here's my idea: find 100 families with no name change, and
100 that did.  Makr economic, social, and religious tradition profiles
on each 3 or 4 generational family.  I predict that the name-changers
would be more socially mobile, less religious, more exogamous, etc.,
etc. None of these differences could have influenced immigration officials.

Good luck with your research,

Jules Levin

--Yale Zussman

I may also be naive to think that the immigrant would not be asked to
pronounce their names if the clerk/officer could not read it. These
folks were not mute.

About "changing the spelling" -- the manifests I've seen have all been
written in English or German, in any case, using our Latin alphabet.
Whereas many of our ancestors would have written their names in Russian
or Yiddish, totally different alphabets. The name on the manifest might
have been an undecipherable scribble to them (assuming they were
literate at all)

Also, there was a comment yesterday about names beginning with G or H.
The Russian (Cyrllic) alphabet has a guttural H, like the beginning of
Khrushchev, but a soft H is rendered with a G, hence, the Shakespearean
play Gamlet or Hirsch spelled as Girsh. I am guessing these names were
pronounced correctly, but written in the Russian alphabet with an
initial G, which of course looks nothing like an English/German G.

Curious if anyone has more information on these -- could be helpful in
understanding the name-change stories that so many of us have.
--

 

JoAnne:
Your Gedmatch cannot be M131535 as indicated in Jewish Gen. I have a number of names in your listing.
Can you give me the Ancestry or Family Tree Maker ID
Henry Lobbenberg
Toronto, ON
Gedcom: 9842111 

Have you ever known a government employee who didn’t generate paper?